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Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest

Magna Carta and the subsequent Charter of the Forest (Carta de Foresta) were responses to the unique political, social, and economic circumstances that emerged during the reigns of King John and his son, King Henry III, including military defeats that ended Angevin control of western France, a multi-year break with the papacy and arbitrary treatment of influential barons. In 1215, neither John nor his barons expected the terms of Magna Carta to be respected for long. John repudiated the document within weeks and went to war with his barons. Only John’s untimely death in 1216 provided the opportunity for the terms of Magna Carta to be entrenched and expanded through additional charters such as the Charter of the Forest during the reign of his son. Like John, Henry III had experienced military defeats and treated his barons arbitrarily, demonstrating the need for further charters and institutions to ensure the monarch followed the accepted law of the land. In the reign of Henry III, Magna Carta informed the emergence of parliamentary government.

The Reign of King John and the Coming of Magna Carta

Like those of many of his predecessors, John’s accession to the English throne was contested. Although Richard apparently acknowledged John as his successor to all his territories on his deathbed, the new king faced an immediate challenge from supporters of his twelve-year-old nephew, Arthur of Brittany. Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Brittany supported Arthur as Richard’s rightful heir to the Angevin domains; John had the support of England and Normandy. Arthur also had a powerful supporter in King Philip II of France.

Despite John’s reputation for political and military incompetence, which dated from his time in Ireland and attempts to rebel against Richard, he began his reign with victories. When the teenage Arthur besieged his grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, in the château de Mirebeau in 1202, John took decisive action to relieve the siege and defeat Arthur’s forces. Arthur was captured by John’s barons on August 1, 1202, and imprisoned in the château de Falaise under the guardianship of William de Braose.

The interior of Bordeaux Cathedral where King John married his second wife, Isabelle of Angouleme, in 1200.

For John’s barons, the existence of an alternate claimant to the throne was advantageous because they could threaten to shift their allegiance if the king disregarded the laws and customs of the kingdom. The barons expected John to come to terms with the captured Arthur as Henry II had come to terms with his three elder sons in 1174. Instead, John had the young man killed, and may even have done the deed himself. According to the Annals of Margam, a historical chronicle maintained by the Cistercian monks of Margam Abbey in Wales, “After King John had captured Arthur and kept him alive in prison for some time, at length, in the castle of Rouen, after dinner on the Thursday before Easter, when he was drunk and possessed by the devil, he slew him with his own hand, and tying a heavy stone to the body cast it into the river Seine.”7 There was no official announcement regarding Arthur’s fate. He simply disappeared, allowing rumours of John’s involvement to spread widely throughout his domains. John’s assumed involvement in the disappearance of his nephew was a grave transgression, which cast a shadow over the king’s reputation for the rest of his reign.

John’s reputation deteriorated further when he was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church in 1209. John’s predecessors, Henry I, Stephen, and Henry II, all experienced jurisdictional conflicts with the church, but John’s inability to make peace with the papacy until the very end of his reign cemented a reputation for both villainy and arbitrary rule. The trouble began when the archbishop of Canterbury died in 1205. John seized the opportunity to appoint one of his staunch supporters, John de Gray, the bishop of Norwich, as the new archbishop of Canterbury. The Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral — the clerics who advised the late archbishop — however, claimed it was their right to elect the successor, which was accorded to the church by Henry I’s Charter of Liberties. The chapter elected as archbishop one of their sub-priors, Reginald, who travelled to Rome for confirmation of his new position over John’s objections.

The pope settled the dispute by advancing Stephen Langton, one of the eventual authors of Magna Carta, as his own candidate, dismissing the claims of the candidates chosen by both John and the chapter. John objected to Langton, both personally, because of his connections to Philip II’s court in Paris, and because of the process by which he was chosen as archbishop. When John refused to allow Langton to enter England, let alone take up the role of archbishop of Canterbury, the pope placed England under interdict, forbidding most religious ceremonies to be performed throughout John’s kingdom. John treated the interdict as a papal declaration of war and began confiscating lands from clergymen and religious communities who obeyed the pope over the king, circumstances that contributed to his eventual excommunication.

In addition to his treatment of his nephew and conflict with the church, John acquired a reputation for erratic treatment of his barons and personal villainy. John’s second wife, Isabelle of Angouleme, was betrothed to one of his vassals, Hugh de Lusignan, before the king decided to marry the twelve-year-old heiress himself. John levied extraordinary taxes and demands for military service in his campaigns against Philip II to preserve his continental empire. Widows and orphans of barons were married against their will to John’s closest allies.

While previous kings had taken mistresses, John became notorious for targeting the wives and daughters of his barons, in violation of his responsibilities as liege lord to the nobility. One monastic chronicler accused John of neglecting the affairs of state to remain in bed until noon with his young queen. The king developed a reputation for choosing pleasure over statecraft, an image bolstered by his love of fine clothes and jewels.

All of John’s political, religious, and personal transgressions might have been tolerated by his subjects if he had achieved military victories that brought wealth and prestige to his barons and knights. Instead, John lived up to his childhood nickname of Lackland by losing most of his continental lands to Philip II. Philip seized Anjou in 1203 when John refused to accept the king of France as liege lord for the county. After Eleanor of Aquitaine died in 1204, one of her sons-in-law, King Alfonso VIII of Castile, took the opportunity to occupy part of her lands in the duchy of Aquitaine. In July 1214, the year before Magna Carta, John lost a pair of decisive battles that cost him most of his empire on the continent. After these defeats, John had to recognize Philip’s territorial gains, agree to a six-year truce, and pay compensation. Barons who owned estates in both England and Normandy lost lands, and merchants engaged in continental trade found their ships seized by the French.

Nineteenth-century French illustration of the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, which cost King John much of his territory in what is now France.